Another milestone!

Last week I (Kristi) graduated from Hope International University with an MBA in International Development. It has been a long, slow journey, so it was exciting to celebrate this accomplishment. Both sets of our parents were excited to celebrate this event with us, and it just happened to be a few weeks after we got engaged!

I went to campus for the first time on the night before graduation for the banquet. It was surreal going through a graduation ceremony again, but it was a great symbol of the closure of this long process of getting the MBA.

One of the perks of getting a master’s degree is the hood that you get to wear at graduation:

Or do you wear it like this?

I finally got to see the campus that I’ve been taking classes at for over 5 years—it really exists! And we got to spend some time with my professor and advisor, Dr. Rabe, the original inspiration for doing this program:

The rest of our big family weekend included lunch with the grand marshall, Peter (on the right in the photo above with my hood), a wedding planning pow-wow, and church at Knox with our friend Augustine from Rwanda preaching.

When the dust settled, we left for Yosemite on Tuesday with my (Kristi’s) parents. We saw the Sequoias, took a couple hikes in the southern part of the park and in Yosemite Valley, and saw 3 of the waterfalls. Ah, the splendor of God’s creation!

On the way back we spent the night in ‘gold country’ in order to see Joseph and his wife Esther, good friends of Bob’s in Rwanda. It was wonderful to reconnect with them and hear how God is using them to bring healing and reconciliation in Rwanda. They were excited to hear about our engagement, and we even have a picture of them praying for us before we left: